Underground Infrastructures: Planning, Design, and Construction

Index

Chapter 1

Introduction

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

Rabindranath Tagore

1.1 Underground Space and Its Requirement

The joy of traveling through underground metros, rail, and road tunnels, especially the half-tunnels in mountains and visiting caves, cannot be described. Modern underground infrastructures are really engineering marvels of the 21st century. The space created below the ground surface is generally known as underground space. Underground space may either be developed by open excavation in soft strata or soil, the top of which is subsequently covered to get the space below, or created by excavation in hard strata or rock.

Underground space is available almost everywhere, which may provide the site for activities or infrastructure that are difficult or impossible to install aboveground or whose presence aboveground is unacceptable or undesirable. Another fundamental characteristic of underground space lies in the natural protection it offers to whatever is placed underground. This protection is simultaneously mechanical, thermal, acoustic, and hydraulic (i.e., watertight). It is effective not only in relation to the surface, but also within the underground space itself. Thus underground infrastructure offers great safety against all natural disasters and nuclear wars, ultraviolet rays from holes in the ozone layer, global warming, electromagnetic pollution, and massive solar storms.

Increasing population and the developing needs and aspirations of humankind for our living environment require increasing provision of space of all kinds. This has become a high priority for most mega cities since the closing years of the 20th century. The world’s population is becoming more urbanized, at an unprecedented pace. There were 21 mega cities with populations of more than 10 million people by the year 2000, as predicted earlier; 17 of these cities were in developing countries [1]. There is a need for sustainable development that meets the need of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

At the same time, growing public concerns for both conservation and quality of life are rightly giving pause to unrestrained development of the cities at ground level. Provision of new urban infrastructure may either coexist or conflict with improvement of the urban environment. In each city, the balance will depend on local priorities and economic circumstances; but unquestionably, environmental considerations are now being accorded greater importance everywhere. Even skyscrapers have three- to four-storied basements.

In the aforementioned scenario, city planners, designers, and engineers have a greater responsibility to foster a better environment for living, working, and leisure activity at the ground surface and are therefore turning increasingly to the creation of space underground to accommodate new transportation, communication and utility networks, and complexes for handling, processing, and storing many kinds of goods and materials. So to stay on top, go underground.

In different countries, various facilities have been built underground. These facilities include:

• Underground parking space

• Rail and road tunnels

• Sewage treatment plants

• Garbage incineration plants

• Underground mass rapid transport systems, popularly known as underground metro

• Underground oil storage and supply systems (through pipelines in tunnels)

• Underground cold storage

• Hydroelectric projects with extensive use of underground caverns and tunnels

In Shanghai, China, more than 2 million m² of subsurface space has been developed as underground buildings for various uses since modernization in 1980. Underground supermarkets, warehouses, silos, garages, hospitals, markets, restaurants, theaters, hotels, entertainment centers, factories and workshops, culture farms, plantations, subways, and subaqueous tunnels may be found throughout the city of Shanghai [2].

A publication of Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences Going Underground [3] is a useful document describing various uses of underground space. One outstanding example of the use of underground space is an underground ice hockey stadium with a span of 61 m, in Gjovik, Norway, built for the 1994 winter Olympic Games.

"Out of sight, out of mind" summarizes the advantages of creating public awareness of underground space, a remarkable resource that is still largely underdeveloped but available worldwide. The time is ripe for exploring the possibilities of developing underground space for civic utilities in mega cities. It is pertinent to give the example of the Palika Bazar, an underground market in New Delhi, India. As part of the Cannought Place shopping area, the Palika Bazar was built as a cut-and-cover subsurface structure with a beautiful garden created above it. If the Palika Bazar was on the surface, the garden space would have been lost and surface congestion would have increased immeasurably.

There is a challenge for developing countries because they have to find solutions that are effective, affordable, and locally acceptable, which can be implemented at a rate that keeps pace with the growing problems. So, more rock engineering experts are being consulted now.

1.2 History of Underground Space Use

In the primitive ages, beginning roughly three million years ago, from the time human beings first existed on earth to the Neolithic age of approximately 3000 B.C., underground space was used in the form of cave dwellings so that people could protect themselves from the threats posed by natural (primarily climatic) hazards. The world’s biggest cave is 207 m high and 152 m wide in a Vietnam forest. This Hang Son Doong cave is larger than the Dear cave in Sarawak, Malaysia, which is more than 100 m high and 90 m wide. Following this period, in ancient times from roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. 500, which spanned the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, technology employed in the construction of tunnels progressed considerably [4].

The earliest examples of underground structures in India were in the form of dwelling pits cut into the compacted loess deposits in Kashmir around 3000 and 500 B.C. This was brought to light by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) during excavations in 1960. These pit houses were found to provide excellent protection against cold and severe winter weather as well as the heat of summer. They also offered protection against external attack. Dwellings dating back to 1600 B.C. were also noted at Nagarjuna Konda in Andhra Pradesh state [5].

The world’s most beautiful and elaborate rock tunnels, the rock temples in Maharashtra state, cut out of the hardest rock and having a length of some kilometers, indicate early experience in underground engineering by humans. The tunnels of Ellora alone add up to 10.8 km in length. In medieval India, forts and palaces were provided with fountains, underground pathways, basement halls for storage, meeting halls, summer retreats, and water tunnels. Underground constructions in Daulatabad fort, Man Mandir in the palace of King Man Singh, and the 17 basement chambers below the famous TajMahal, are outstanding constructions of medieval kings of India [6].

The mythological story of Ramayana mentions the town of Kishkindha, which was built completely underground and thus enabled its King Bali to win all battles.

Ancient Egyptians gave utmost care to bury their dead in the underground structures, as they believed strongly in life after death. The upper level is in a rectangular shape with a flat top called mastaba. The lower part is an underground level where the floor was covered by mortar, crushed stones, and straw. Later the idea of mastaba evolved toward the true pyramid. The pyramid contains an underground tomb structure that was built first before construction of the pyramid. These pyramids are as old as 2778 B.C. The great pyramid of Khufo at Giza in Egypt has an incline tunnel as long as 82 m in Giza rock [7].

In the area of the pyramid, ancient Egyptians were fond of underpasses below causeways leading to other pyramids. Sometimes these causeways were considered sacred paths; workers were not permitted to walk on them and therefore it was necessary to cross them by these underpasses. Another example also in the area of the pyramids is the underground drainage canals for the drainage systems in the funerary temples of Khufo and Chephern. In the courtyard of Khufo’s temple, a basin of 20 by 30 feet (7 × 10 m) with a depth of approximately 7 feet (2 m) was cut in the rock as a collector tank from which branch canals go out; most of its length was underground. Another example from this area is the underground construction under the Sphinx and the pedestrian tunnel between the pyramids [7].

In June 1992, 5 large man-carved rock caverns were unearthed by four local farmers after they pumped water out of five small pools in their village near the town of Longyou in the Zhejiang Province of China. Subsequently, 19 other caverns were found nearby. These caverns were excavated in Fenghuang Hill, a small hill that is 3 km north in Longyou County. The hill has elevations between 39 and 69 m above mean sea level. The Longyou rock caverns are a group of large ancient underground caverns. They were carved manually in pelitic siltstone in the Quxian Formation of the Upper Cretaceous. They have the following five characteristics: more than 2000 years old, man carved, large spanned, near the ground surface, and medium to hard surrounding rock. This discovery attracted the attention of many specialists from China, Japan, Poland, Singapore, and the United States [8].

There are 23 known large-scale underground cities in the Cappadocia region in Turkey. The underground cities were connected by hidden passages to houses in the region. Hundreds of rooms in the underground cities were connected to each other with long passages and labyrinth-like tunnels. The corridors were made long, low, and narrow to restrict the movement of intruders. Shafts (usually connected with the lowest floor of the underground cities) were used for both ventilation and communication inside the underground cities. Although some researchers claim that the underground settlements were connected to each other with tunnels, conclusive evidence to support this idea has not yet been found [9].

New hydropower projects are being taken up involving construction of more than 1000-km length tunnels with sizes varying from 2.5 to 14 m diameter to add 16,500 MW of hydropower by the end of 11th 5-year plan in India. After the success of the metro rail project in Delhi with state-of-the-art technology, construction of a metro rail project is planned in various cities, including Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, Chandigarh, and Howrah-Kolkata. The Indian Railways is constructing the most challenging Jammu–Udhampur–Srinagar–Baramulla railway line in the difficult Himalayan terrain of Jammu and Kashmir State, and there are 42 tunnels with a total length of 107.96 km in the Katra-Quazigund section (142 km). The Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) has constructed a 760-km Konkan railway line with 92 tunnels with a total length of 83.6 km. The Border Roads Organisation has planned a prestigious and challenging highway tunnel with a length of 8.9 km under the 3978-m high Rohtang pass on Manali-Leh road, and construction of the tunnel is to start shortly [10]. Six-story underground parks are under construction in New Delhi and are planned in many cities. The government of India is planning a 497-km-long rail link between Bilaspur-Manali and Leh in Himalaya. China is building 5000-km-long rail lines in Himalaya for rapid development there. Interesting case histories of construction are presented extensively in The Master Builder (Vol. 8, No. 8, Sept. 2006, India).

The basic difference in these historical underground spaces and present-day spaces, however, is that those in the past were built or created out of an interest to do something new and creative. However, today underground space is required for sustainable development and for providing better lifestyles to people.

1.3 Underground Space for Sustainable Development

When the United Nations was established in 1945, 90% of the world’s population lived in rural areas [11]. With time and migration of people toward cities in search of jobs and better lifestyles, the populations of cities grew many fold. Already a billion of these new urban residents live in health- and life-threatening situations, with hundreds of millions living in absolute poverty. At least 250 million people have no access to safe piped water. Four hundred million people lack sanitation.

Ninety percent of the population growth will be in developing countries; 90% of that will be in urban areas. In effect, every year we are witnessing the birth of 20 new cities the size of Washington, DC, or, put another way, more people will be packed into the cities of the developing world in the 21st century than were alive on the entire planet in 1996 [11]. This global trend of migration toward mega cities is the consequence of rapid growth and sometimes destructive wars that face both rural and urban populations the world over.

Most of these huge cities will be located in developing nations with limited financial resources. Will these cities become ecological and human disasters or can they be designed to evolve as healthy, desirable places to live? Planners are beginning to develop planning tools for future mega cities surrounded by sustainable regions, which in turn would be linked to other regions as part of a global economic network. Each region would import resources such as clean water, energy, raw materials, and finished products. Most cities would be surrounded by rural areas that would provide agricultural and other locally generated products. These sustainable regions in turn would export products and services.

To be sustainable, such regions would have to minimize imports, have excellent infrastructure systems, make optimum use of available urban and rural space, and then generate viable exports with an absolute minimum of waste. Even human wastes will have to be treated to high standards, with both waste water and solid wastes being used as recovered resources for the surrounding agricultural lands. What do tunnels and underground space in general have to do with the environment, sustainable development, and an improved habitat? They play an extremely important role now, and we can expect the tunneling industry to take on an even greater role in the future, for example [12],

• Tunnels play a vital environmental role by conveying clean water to urban areas and by conveying waste water out. Most major urban areas depend on tunnels for these services, which function with a minimum of maintenance.

• The usable space of a parcel of land can, in some cases, be almost doubled by adding floor space or bulk storage below the ground surface. Life-cycle cost analysis may reveal underground alternatives to be much more cost-effective.

• It has been demonstrated by several recent earthquakes that tunnels behave very well in earthquakes (<7 M). If urban planners want an important lifeline line to survive an earthquake, they should go out of their way to use tunnels.

• Underground is the only safe location for the storage of nuclear waste and other hazardous or undesirable materials.

• In transit systems, tunnels provide safe, environmentally sound, very fast, and unobtrusive transportation for people in all walks of life in both developed and developing countries.

• Underground space is being used increasingly for industrial, office, and even residential facilities.

• Underground space for bulk storage of food, liquids, and gas has gained increasing acceptance in various areas of the world.

• Congestion and traffic jams in urban areas have been reduced dramatically by the use of underground metros and road tunnel networks.

• In cold regions, the cost of heating underground facilities is reduced significantly. There is no leakage of heat as in superstructures.

• Hygienic conditions, thermal comfort, and silence inside underground facilities will restore inner peace for people after some time.

As engineers, what is our role in this urban future? First and fundamentally, cities are not sustainable without a proper and well-maintained infrastructure. The trend toward concentration of masses of people in mega cities will present tremendous challenges to urban planners, as well as the infrastructure industry. It is important that engineers contribute to livable, functional cities—the ultimate goal of sustainable development strategies. Underground infrastructures are the life support system for mega cities.

More extensive use of the urban underground can help cities reach the goal of sustainable development, but only under the condition of long-term planning. Although the concept of underground planning is not new, until now it has not been implemented and has not considered all the four resources (space, water, energy, and material) and their interactions. Planning of the urban underground space should be done considering the four resources of the subsurface as the organ of a body that is in a fragile equilibrium. There should be a holistic approach of multiple-use planning, which considers not only geological and environmental effects but also economic efficiency and social acceptability of underground space development. As a result, cities will be able to make more extensive use of their urban underground without compromising the use of their resources for future generations.

1.4 What Should Be Done?

The ITA and the international tunneling industry should strongly support Habitat II (Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements organized in Istanbul, Turkey, in June 1996) and the goals of sustainable development. The leaders of our industry must collaborate with government officials and urban planners to ensure that the planning and construction of infrastructure will be timely and more than adequate to meet the needs for growing future demand. As a result, we must actively design infrastructure not merely for present needs, but for the distant future also.

At the same time, industry leaders must help make the planners and designers of infrastructure fully aware of the phenomenal advantages of underground facilities, especially in terms of improving the environment and in reduced life-cycle costs. We must also demonstrate to planners and government officials that the earlier underground facilities are constructed, the more cost-effective they can be. We should go from whole to parts in planning and not from parts to unknown whole. We should go for the evolving planning. We should have a master plan of underground infrastructure below the mega cities.

Finally, we need to continue to improve and fine-tune our industry so that underground facilities are quicker and less expensive to build, with much less impact on nearby facilities and residents. As such, safe underground facilities can be more attractive and more desirable to both developers and users.

The result will be a strong boost to the tunneling industry in contributing to a better quality of life and a cleaner environment. The world would be a much more difficult and undesirable place to live in without tunnels and the use of underground space in general. Events such as ISRM and ITA congresses and symposia and conferences at local and international levels in other countries provide an impetus for engineers, planners, government representatives, and developers to work together to see that future world development incorporates the required infrastructure and makes the best possible use of the underground resource. The best part is that all of this is not only good for the environment, but will also be good for the underground industry.

The active utilization of land in major cities takes the form of a Gaussian distribution curve, as shown in Figure 1.1. The Gaussian curve represents the economic growth of the city, with the center of the city being represented by the central axis. However, in terms of safety and amenities, the greater the tendency of a city toward active utilization of land, the greater the desire to pursue an inverted dome pattern of urban planning (Fig. 1.1), which incorporates large-scale public open space. In order to adjust both of these forms to meet cities’ needs, increased importance should be placed on the active development of deep underground land as the fundamental starting point for radically reforming the current unattractive, irrational state of surface land development. In short, in order to revitalize cities, in which surface land tends to develop laterally, consideration is now being given to direct the cities’ development through the orderly arrangement of a vertical form extending from shallow underground space to deep underground space [4].

Figure 1.1 A Gaussian distribution curve represents a typical urban space use configuration, whereas an inverted dome distribution curve represents the goal of planning of urban space use [4] .

1.5 Future of Underground Space Facilities

It is expected that the cost of excavating underground is likely to be reduced within the next three decades and that the cost of aboveground infrastructure will rise rapidly. As a result, underground space technology may become more economical than superstructures by 2050, in addition to ecological benefits. So, scenic hilly states are likely to grow as future heavens of the globe. Peace-loving civilization is likely to evolve in the near future, as it is need of the time. The new peaceful civilization may opt for healthy technology and ethical economic development of the earth. This peaceful civilization may, therefore, opt for underground space infrastructure to regenerate a healthy ecological heaven on the earth’s surface and an underground peaceful heaven with enjoyable homes, facilities, and work culture, providing freedom from mega fears of natural disasters and nuclear wars. Great leaders will continue to be born all over the world in the future who will do great organized works—as in the past so in the